Jeffrey L. WilsonPandora Internet RadioThe once-pioneering streaming music platform finally offers unlimited skips, replays, and ad-free listening, but it still has a long way to go to catch up to the leaders in the category.

No live content. Some tracks aren't available for on-demand streaming. Can't browse by category. Some lag in testing when switching sections.

Bottom Line

The once-pioneering streaming music platform finally offers unlimited skips, replays, and ad-free listening, but it still has a long way to go to catch up to the leaders in the category.

Pandora Internet Radio, one of the most recognized names in streaming music, has finally evolved into a modern music service. For far too long, the company simply hitched its wagon to the sometimes-questionable Music Genome Project, but that recommendation engine wasn't enough to keep Spotify, Slacker Radio, and other competitors from outpacing the service by offering attractive and innovative features. Pandora has since come a long way with Pandora Premium, a new streaming music subscription tier that offers a decent number of competitive features. That said, the new option doesn't yet offer enough to sway users away from the top players.

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A New Plan

Pandora offers free and premium service levels, so you can sample the music whether or not you want to sign up for a subscription. Users with free accounts are limited to six song skips per hour, and they hear frequent audio ads. Upgrading to Pandora Plus ($4.99 per month, or $54.89 per year) opens the door to an ad-free experience, unlimited song skips, the ability to rewind tracks, and offline playback on mobile—though mobile playback is limited to three stations. Pandora Premium ($9.99 per month, or $109.89 per year) adds unlimited offline mobile playback and fully customizable playlists. Pandora's three-tier offering closely resembles Slacker Radio's price structure.

On the mobile side, Pandora Premium has three bitrate tiers that impact the music's sound quality. You can select Low (32kbps), Standard (64kbps), or High (192kbps) settings. The Low setting is good for people who don't want the music streams to chew through their data plans, while the High setting is all about sound quality, data caps be damned. The Standard setting, naturally, is a balance between the two extremes. A Pandora representative stated that the company plans to bump up the High setting to 320kbps over time. Among the major streaming music services, only Microsoft Groove Music offers the same 192kbps bitrate sound, and only iHeartRadio offers less, at 128kbps.

Pandora lacks an equivalent to Spotify's Family Plan, which lets multiple listeners use the service for one low monthly $14.99 fee.

Note: Pandora does not let you record audio. If you want that unique feature, check out SiriusXM Internet Radio, the Editors' Choice for streaming audio services focused on live audio.

Computer Blue

You begin your musical journey by keying the name of an artist or song into the search box, which causes Pandora to populate a station. For instance, my Prince search caused Pandora to launch a Prince-based station. That's typical of what you'd find in competing streaming music services, but I like that Pandora explains its choices, and offers insight into the artists.

For example, when Pandora played "Let's Go Crazy," a song that the service notes as exemplifying Prince's musical style, it listed bullet point highlights of what you could expect from the Purple One, including "basic Rock song structures," "R&B influences," and "danceable grooves." The bullet points aren't a game changer, but they're a nice touch.

The music player showcases large album art in the middle of the page, with easily accessible lyrics, player controls, and song and artist information just south of it. The redesigned Pandora website is one of the most barebones interfaces I've seen in the streaming music space, but that isn't an insult. Many other services feed you content via panel-driven interfaces, but Pandora scales things back and places the focus on what you want to hear.

That said, there's no way to browse Pandora's catalog by category, which is surprising. Nearly every streaming music service I've tested lets you explore their offerings by rifling through a genre listing. I understand Pandora's desire to create a simple, lean-back experience, but an optional category section would be a welcome addition.

Music Box

In the past, I found Pandora's Music Genome Project-powered artist recommendations a bit unreliable, but they proved useful in my testing this time around. For example, Pandora wisely inserted Michael Jackson, The Time, and Stevie Wonder into my Prince-based station. Likewise, Pandora correctly placed A Tribe Called Quest, Craig Mack, Geto Boys, and other acts from hip-hop's golden era into a station seeded by Pete Rock & CL Smooth.

Pandora also lets you customize your stations a bit. You can give a track a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to send feedback to Pandora's music algorithm. The service no longer lets you directly edit the artists and songs that seed your station, however.

Clicking a song's album art reveals options that inform you why the station is playing a particular track, and lets you build a station around the song or artists—very cool. When I heard Mobb Deep's' "Shook Ones Pt. II," I clicked "Why was this track selected?" Apparently, the track has "headnodic beats" and "rhythmically complex rapping" that resembles Pete Rock & CL Smooth's catalog. I really like this insight into the song selection process.

Conversely, I really dislike the lag that I experienced whenever I moved between the main page, the settings section, and the My Stations and Settings areas. The lag isn't huge, but it's definitely noticeable.

Are You Experienced?

Music streamed crisply over both my home and office network connections. Unless you're a true audiophile, Pandora's sound quality should satisfy, especially when the audio is pumped through a phone or desktop speaker.

However, I am a bit disappointed in the content that's available to stream on demand. For example, Led Zeppelin's "All My Love" exists on Pandora only in sample form if you try to stream the individual track, but you can find it within classic rock stations. Amazon Music Unlimited, on the other hand, let me play the song, on demand, in its entirety. I also couldn't stream several Jay-Z songs on demand, likely because of the rapper's Tidal allegiance.

Pandora lacks Slacker Radio's niche genre stations (such as One-Hit Wonders and Video Games), live ESPN Radio, and informative artist DNA channels. The service also lacks Tidal's excellent editorials. That said, Pandora has comedy bits in its catalog, but that's a routine offering in the streaming music space.

Unplugged

Pandora has a few cool things going for it. By all mean, fire it up if all you want is an incredibly simple lean-back listening experience. But even this expanded iteration of the service simply isn't on the level of the majority of the competition. As a result, Slacker Radio remains our Editors' Choice award-winner among streaming music services, thanks to its deep feature set.

Pandora Internet Radio

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Bottom Line: The once-pioneering streaming music platform finally offers unlimited skips, replays, and ad-free listening, but it still has a long way to go to catch up to the leaders in the category.

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About the Author

For more than a decade, Jeffrey L. Wilson has penned gadget- and video game-related nerd-copy for a variety of publications, including 1UP, 2D-X, The Cask, Laptop, LifeStyler, Parenting, Sync, Wise Bread, and WWE. He now brings his knowledge and skillset to PCMag as Senior Analyst.
When he isn't staring at a monitor (or two) and churning out Web... See Full Bio

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Pandora Internet Radio

Pandora Internet Radio

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